NcNaught Nailed

by Diane D'Urso

Rob, Mark, and someone else whose name I didn't catch finally saw the comet from Windy Hill about 20 minutes after sunset, nearly lost in the orange afterglow of the sunset, and crud.

A lot of work for a really, really subtle fuzzball! No WAY was it a naked-eye object! But I'd have been disappointed if we hadn't caught McNaught. If we hadn't it still would have been a very nice sunset, cold and windy, but dramatic. Much better conditions from last night on the bluffs above the Pacific south of Half Moon Bay, although we saw the sun set through the striated clouds with a 5" f 8 refractor, unfiltered, no diagonal, with two sunspots visible! The sun was rimmed in green, though it might have been an artifact of the achromatic objective.

James Adams